I'm Paul. I started a blog in 2010 to record the athletic endeavour that was the Birdathlon. I've carried on recording stupid stuff like this since. It's for my own benefit, to have a record to browse through and reminisce. I'm hoping to keep it going for my daughter too, it will be much better than the dusty photo albums that I looked through as a child. I enjoy interacting with others that read the posts and welcome comments. Maybe I like the attention (that's the Oversharing bit). I've learnt a lot from other people's blogs and I hope people find my blog interesting and maybe even useful.
It's February 2012 at the time of writing this. I'm heavily engaged in becoming a Wainwright completist, hoping to be a good enough swimmer to enter my first triathlon, considering some insane endurance challenge to celebrate my 40th birthday, hoping that my daughter will continue to love going up mountains, thinking about getting a dog, vegan for just over a year, loving fell running, not that interested in entering or training for road races, wanting to pick up a cheap snowboard, thinking about building a canoe - maybe on a canoe building course, in love with my wife, wearing shorts over my running tights, loving being a dad, considering cancelling sky, happy in my work, busy in my work, loving the lake district, trying to do more yoga, paying off debts, about to have been married for ten years (September), getting better at swimming, worried about what to wear for my first triathlon, hoping to do a 100 mile road cycle sportive this year, wanting to buy a mountain bike, against the cuts, not buying a mountain bike because I have enough hobbies and there's more important things to use money for, still trying to bring down the government, not remotely interested in emigrating to Australia, happy with my lot.
It will be interesting to see how this changes...
Update 25/5/2013
May 2013 and time to update the 'About Me' page. Since the last update, I've worked further towards completing my Wainwrights. At the time of writing, I have 22 left with plans to get at least one done tomorrow. I did three triathlons last year, no plans for any this year at the moment. I did three sprint triathlons and I think I will prefer doing longer stuff but have no plans for more sprint triathlons this year. My swimming has come on great, I swam 2k non stop a little while ago and I did a fair bit of open water swimming last year with plans to start up again soon now the weather is marginally warmer. I had a lovely 40th birthday without the need for an insane endurance challenge. Having said that, I have just completed the Great Lakeland Three Day Mountain Marathon where I beat my distance record and then beat it again the following day and still got up on day three for a relatively easy 16.5 miles.
My navigation has improved significantly. I still take wrong turns but don't usually get lost!
Apart from the GL3D, I've done surprisingly few races. I think the only non-fell event I have done is a Parkrun in Carlisle. I did enter a fell race which I really enjoyed but either through injury or other means, I've not done any of the local races. A lot of preparation went into the GL3D including longer and longer runs, runs with camping out practice and navigation practice. I'm going to concentrate on finishing my Wainwrights, getting back to full fitness and then smashing some shorter distance road races before considering my next big challenge. At the moment, I'm swaying towards ultra trail runs or longer triathlons but nothing is set yet.
In other news, I'm still vegan (although have been eating a bit of chocolate lately - time to sharpen up there), doing more yoga, reading and enjoying occasional periods of time doing nothing. I've rolled back on the activities I want to do - not enough time or money and I would rather do a few things well rather than lots of things rubbish. The focus is clearly on running and swaying more towards fell running.
Oh yeah, we had another kid. Lucy was born on the 7th January. She's pretty cool.
